‘Saved Through Faith’

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — Ephesians 2:8

The Bible says, ‘By grace you have been saved through faith’. Faith in Christ alone gives us the assurance of heaven. Poet Henry van Dyke put it like this: ‘I am standing upon the seashore. A ship … spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch until … she hangs like a speck of white cloud where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says, “She’s gone!” “Gone where?” Gone from my sight. That’s all. She’s just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left … Her diminished size is in me, not her. And just at the moment when someone says, “There, she’s gone!” there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the joyful shout, “Here she comes!” And that is dying.’ You say, ‘But I wasn’t raised in church. Where do I go to find faith?’. D.L. Moody said: ‘I prayed for faith and thought it would come down and strike me like lightning, but faith didn’t seem to come. Then one day I read the tenth chapter of Romans, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” I closed my Bible and prayed for faith. Then I opened my Bible and began to study – and faith has been growing ever since.’ You say, ‘But I don’t know how to pray’. Simply say, ‘Lord Jesus, I place my trust in You today and accept You as my personal Savior’. Did you pray that prayer? Yes? Then you are ‘saved through faith’.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, thank You for Your Grace and the faith that You give me, and for Baptism that makes me a child of God. It is all from You – I bring nothing. Thank You. In Jesus’ Name, Amen